Paraguay and the Pantanal

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Here we are, back at Foz do Iguacu after three pretty exciting weeks in Paraguay and the Brazilian Pantanal.


Not many tourists go to Paraguay as there are not really any tourist attractions as such. Paraguay is a landlocked country with a population of about 5 million and an area similar to England, half of which is the unhospitable wilderness of the Chaco. The government is very corrupt and does nothing for the people, who even have to pay fees for education. The Paraguayans in turn are very laid back and unambitious and so the country seems to have stayed in limbo since the 19th century with nothing really happening and little evolution. As a few Brazilians and even Paraguayans remarked, if the average Paraguayan has enough to eat for dinner and some sort of roof over his head he won't try to work any harder to improve his standard of living, he'll just leave it at that. Paraguay is certainly a very poor country compared to its neighbours Brazil and Argentina.


The liveliest place we visited in Paraguay was our first stop, Ciudade de l'Este, the border crossing with Foz do Iguacu, Brazil. A lot of Brazilians come here to buy cheap goods, especially electronics as it costs half the price as in Brazil because of taxes. A lot of stolen goods and drugs from Paraguay pass into Brazil over this border and so it's a very crazy place. There are people carrying big suspicious looking bags and boxes all over the place and although there are a lot of police around it really seems like a free for all. Apparently the city is also very seedy at night but we never found out if this was true (fortunately!) as we only stayed a few hours before heading onto Ascuncion.


Ascuncion, the capital of Paraguay, is the greenest, quietest capital I know, maybe joint with Vietienne in Laos. There wasn't really a lot to do there so we just wandered around the city admiring the impressive colonial achitecture. There was a very nice botanical garden, unfortunately a little spoilt by a terrible zoo with lots of animals in tiny cages. We also enjoyed visiting the central market full of people and sights as in Brazil there were no markets or only very limited ones and it was something we'd missed. The poverty of the city was quite obvious as a lot of places seemed very runned down and the city parks were full of street kids in rags playing with stray dogs.


Although the Paraguayans were not as warm and friendly as the Brazilians, they were nice enough and in the guest house where we stayed in Ascuncion the family was great. Marie Angelica, who is in fact Argentinian but is now married to a Paraguayan welcomed us in her house in the nice suburbs of Ascuncion. She could afford to live there because she had a really good pension from Argentina. Otherwise, she explained, all the really nice houses around were owned by government officials or contrabanders - the only way to make money in Paraguay. We had a good dinner of typical paraguayan food with the family every evening. This was lucky as Paraguay is not reputated for its cuisine and the food we ate for lunch in the city was not great! I often resorted to avoiding anything with meat and filling myself with 'Chipas'. A kind of heavy bread in the form of doughnut rings made with corn flour, milk and cheese, Chipas, and indian snack, are sold all over the place by sellers who wander the streets balancing really heavy baskets of them on their heads and shouting chipa, chipa, chipa!


We only spent two full days in Ascuncion before taking the local buses to visit some other small towns in the area. The buses were old colourful funny shaped affairs full of people and life with windows wide open, music playing and sellers crowding around the bus offering a selection of different food and other items every time the bus stopped. It's so much more fun and interesting than the boring clean, quiet, air conditioned Brazilian coaches, for short distances of course!

We stopped at various small towns - Yapacarai, Piribebuy, Paraguari, Caacupe, to see the way people live and to visit the colonial churches and the local markets. We didn't stay in any town long as there wasn't really a lot to do. Mostly we sat in cafes and watched the slow-paced life of the Paraguayans. The first time Edouard ordered a beer in the afternoon he was surprised (and pleased!) to be given a litre bottle. the normal size in Paraguay. It certainly beats the poncy 'demi' in France and went down well on the sunny afternoon. On the subject of drinks, Terere is a religion in Paraguay. A kind of herbal drink like Mate in Argentina, the Paraguayans go everywhere hugging their wide leather covered flask of terere. In the morning they drink it hot but during the day it's iced and apparently very refreshing. We didn't actually have any because the ice is always tap water and potentially dodgy for our delicate european stomachs. However, Mate, which is similar, tastes quite like tea so I'm sure I'd like it.

The scenery on the bus rides in the south was really nice. Very green and varied with fields, lakes and some small mountains. There is a huge potential for ecological tourism in the area but the government hasn't done anything to develop the few national parks that exist or to creat new ones, so there just isn't any structure for tourists. As I said before there just aren't really any attractions in Paraguay. It's a pity because a little tourism would create jobs and be a boost to their ailing economy.

We stayed one night at San Bernardino, a resort town on a huge lake where the rich from Ascuncion come on their weekend breaks. As it was Saturday we expected quite a lively evening but apart from a really new modern outdoor sports club for the rich, the rest of the town was just dead. That's Paraguay for you!

The main thing we really wanted to do in Paraguay was to take a boat trip up the river Paraguay and into the Paraguayan part of the Pantanal. The Pantanal is the biggest inland wetlands area in the world. Its half the size of France and most of it is inaccessible. The majority of the Pantanal is in Brazil but Paraguay has some too, as does Bolivia. We found some information about a cargo boat that travels weekly up the river from the second largest town in Paraguay, Concepcion, to deliver provisions to the villages upsteam which have very limited road access. We heard there were some cabins available on the boat so we called and reserved one before heading north to Concepcion. The day before departure we went to the port to pay for our tickets and very nearly changed our minds. The sky was black and cloudy, the port was run down and depressing with only rough looking dork workers around and there lay our home for 5 days, a dodgy looking old blue boat with little space on the deck, and not much more inside. Could there really be cabins inside ?


I have to admit the next morning as we left our very basic hotel, which suddenly seemed so appealing, I was a little apprehensive. 5 days trapped in that tiny space!! What if I got a dodgy stomach ?? Would there only be men ? Would everyone be annoyed with us for getting in their way while they tried to work ? What if there was a storm ? What would we eat?


However my fears were replaced by excitement when we arrived. The boat was transformed into a mix of a cargo boat and a floating market. There was fruit, bread, biscuits, toothpaste and small commodities hanging over the benches inside and household goods, chairs, tables, crates of beer, motorbikes, sacks of watermelon, flour, cement, corn etc on deck. Porters were loading more and more things all the time and I have no idea how it was all organised. Everywhere passengers were fighting for space to sit down, put their bags and hang their hammocks. Thank goodness we had our cabin. It was a tiny space with bunk beds complete with cockroaches and other delightful insects but it had a window and it was our own space.


In the end the trip was fantastic. The days went by really quickly as we chatted to the Paraguayans on board, admired the scenery and watched all the activity when we arrived at the settlements on the river and goods were unloaded to be replaced by others. It was very hot during the day but we soon learned that the lovely squat toilets doubled up as showers as each had a hose that sucked up water from the river. It was smelly but refreshing and only a little worrying when a river snake managed to find its way into the toilet area while people were brushing their teeth!

The vegetation on the river banks was so green and varied that I was amazed to learn that nothing could be grown there and it was only good for livestock. When the boat arrived it was a fiesta as everyone dashed on board to buy their only fruit and vegetables of the week.
As we got further up the river we entered the Pantanal where our attention turned to spotting Jacare (alligators) in the river and admiring the rich bird life. Sunrise was a greta time of the day, but the sunset was especially beautiful and the colours seemed to continue for ages. One night we picked up a group of Indians travelling up the river. They didn't speak Spanish or Guarani, the two paraguayan languages, but only their own indiginous language. They had the facial features and skin colour of amazonian indians and the women all had long plaited black hair like Pocahontas. They lived in another world to the one we know.


When we reached the most northerly village in Paraguay the boat stopped for a few hours as normal before heading back down the river the way we came. We would have liked to continue up the Rio Paraguay to Corumba, a large port in Brazil but there were no boats that could take passengers. So we returned with the boat to the first port where we could get off and enter Brazil. On the way back we sat between two large indian families who were travelling down the river to the same place as us to enter Brazil to sell their handicrafts. We weren't sure why all the family including small kids were making this relatively long and expensive trip that the father could have made alone. However, the wife and mother explained that if the rest of the family didn't accompany her husband they wouldn't eat until he gets back as they have no other food at home. I hope his handicrafts sell well.


We were scheduled to arrive at 3am at our destination and we didn't have a cabin on the way back so we slept under the stars on the deck. It sounds romantic until you realise that we were squashed between about 50 other people with one blow up sleeping mat between the two of us and a huge pig tied up nearby that every now and then woke everyone up by trying to have a nibble of the legs nearest to him! Fortunately it didn't rain!


Tired and dirty we arrived in Brazil and took the bus to Campo Grande, the gateway to the Brazilian Pantanal to organise a tour in one of the lodges in the Pantanal. After a night in a lovely comfortable insect-free bed in the city we were taken to a lodge on a river and from the first day went out on many wildlife spotting expeditions with the guides from the lodge. It's currently the end of the dry season in the Pantanal so we went on Jeep safaris, boat trips, walking, and horse-riding across the savanas, through the forests and up the rivers in the hope of spotting the elusive Jaguar among many other animals. Like most people we didn't see a jaguar but we did see an ocelot (like a small Jaguar) following a deer across the savana, jacares, capybaras - the biggest rodent in the world, giant otters (2 metres long) and lots of beautiful birds including the huge Jabiru Stork- the symbol of the Pantanal and my favourite the blue macaws. The latter, beautiful dark blue and yellow parrots, are endangered as they can be sold for 10 000 dollars on the black market. There are only about 7000 left and they only lay one egg per year max. Our guide was very good and knew where to find them so we were lucky, we can only hope they will still be around for future generations to see in their natural habitat.


In the evening we played volley ball with the Brazilians, exchanged travel stories and counted ticks(!) with the other travellers in the lodge over a few beers. It was really relaxing and after 5 days we were pretty sad to leave. However we plan to return in April at the end of the wet season, so that's something to look forward to.


Now we are back at Foz do Iguacu and tomorrow we're off to Argentina. We've heard loads of good reports about Argentina, the diversity of the scenery, the people not to mention the good food and wine. Also, it should be cooler the further south we go and it's well into the forties here so that will be a relief! We'll let you know how it goes!


Loads of love to all!

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Comments

[Aly]

Pantanal trip alone?
Hi, Thanks for posting the details of your trip- this is something I would love to do when I go to Paraguay in a couple of months, and have been trying to find more info about. I'll be travelling alone (woman- age 24). Is this something you would have felt comfortable doing alone? You mention the dock workers, etc, and I'm somewhat curious about how they treated you, etc? Any advice? Thanks again for all the detailed info. aly snyder at hotmail dot com